Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Christopher looked doubtful. His skin was shiny with sweat.

“Oh yes. Every other animal with horns near its mouth—elephants, mammoth, rhinos, pigs, boars—has horns or tusks that turn up. Why did those on Pelorovis turn down? What was their function and was it associated with why they became extinct?” Natalie felt more sweat drip inside her shirt. “It’s one of the great mysteries in my speciality and the beast has never been found as early as this, two million years ago, not in sub-Saharan Africa anyway. So the discovery will be well worth a paper for Nature.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Well done. Your first discovery. We should celebrate.”

“It’s hardly earth shattering.”

“No, but it’s important. That will go down well with my mother. She might not get out the champagne but you’ve made your bones, as they say in the Mafia. How are you getting on with my mother, by the way?”

Natalie nodded. “We had an interesting talk the night I shared her tent with her, but … but …”

Christopher raised his hands. “Hold on! She’s done something to irritate you. Or you have, to irritate her. It can’t have been important or she would have told me. What is it? What’s eating you?” A smile was beginning to appear around the edges of his mouth.

Natalie massaged her temple with her fingers. “It’s nothing in itself. Nothing. But … well, every night after dinner, after we’ve discussed whatever we’ve been discussing, I like to sit outside my tent and wind down. I love the skies down here, the night sounds of the bush—the animals bantering, like it’s market day. Or killing each other in a shower of screams. And I have one cigarette—I’m not a big smoker, just one. And a tiny nip of whiskey. Tiny, but it relaxes me.”

Natalie faltered. Christopher was Eleanor’s son, after all. She wasn’t sure she should have started this. But she had, and he had asked. “The night after the … accident, as I arrived to sleep in your mother’s tent, she smelled whiskey on my breath. It was … she made me feel like a lush. And she made me hand over my flask. She said alcohol wasn’t allowed on the digs here, except when she chose to celebrate some discovery or other, and that if the locals found the flask they would get drunk.”

“She has a point, Natalie.” He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Has she? Has she? I’ve been thinking about what she said, and watching. Half the black Africans who work here are Muslims and would never touch a drop of drink. The others, if they were drink crazy, could easily steal the sugar we have and brew their own concoction. They don’t, but that’s not the point. I’m an adult, Christopher. Totally responsible, totally sane, someone who loves her job.”

She was getting worked up. It was much too hot for that. She forced herself to breathe more slowly. “I am perfectly capable of having one cigarette and one nip of whiskey a night without letting it interfere with my work, without sinking into a haze of alcohol fumes and dancing naked through the camp. Your mother ought to acknowledge that.” Natalie looked down at the ground and inspected the dust on her boots. “I’ve said more than I intended.”

“No, no,” he replied, putting his hand on her arm. “It’s not the first time people have used me as a kind of … Trojan horse to get to my mother.” He grinned. “And I know what you mean. She can be fierce. For her, there’s only the dig, and I have to remind her that there are other things in life.”

He wiped his forehead. “Take Virginia, my sister, who’s a doctor in Palestine. As a girl she was very close to our grandfather—we all were in our own way, but she particularly adored him. However, they turned out to be ships in the night, in one way at least. As he lost his faith, so she grew more and more interested in the Bible. That’s why she’s in Palestine, not only to help the Palestinians but because she’s fascinated by the Holy Land. I think my mother’s ferocity so far as the gorge is concerned, although it fired Jack, Beth, and me, put Virginia off. She’s quasi-religious and part of it is because she’s anxious to show there are other things than the gorge.”

Natalie nodded. “I understand, but that’s not what I’m getting at. I don’t mind a bit if, while we are all here, the dig comes first, dominates everything else. It’s such a privilege to be in Kihara that I wouldn’t query that. My only point is simple: we are not all the same, but that doesn’t mean that those of us who aren’t Eleanor Deacon are drunks and liars and cheats who are intent on putting the whole excavation at risk.” She felt the wet shirt on her back. She had made herself hot all over again. “I’d better stop. I’m making it sound more of a problem than it is.”

He looked at her for a moment without speaking, then examined his watch. “We’ve only another hour before we stop. I promised Daniel and Arnold I’d help them out today. Finish the area they’re in.”

He made to move when they both heard the metallic drone of an airplane engine. There was no mistaking that sound, throaty and high pitched at the same time. They each turned 180 degrees, to watch as it came out of the sun towards them.

“He’s low,” said Natalie as the airplane approached. She might still be the newest person in camp but, by now, she had seen more than a dozen planes buzz the gorge prior to landing and none of them had flown so low—this one was barely two hundred feet above them.

Natalie and Christopher both shielded their eyes from the sun as the noise from the aircraft grew in intensity and it swept up the gorge directly overhead. The noise from its engines swelled till it was deafening.

Suddenly, not fifty feet from where they were standing, something hit the ground with a thump and a cloud of soil-sand billowed towards them.

“What on earth—?” Natalie was mystified. “Have we just been bombed?”

But Christopher was running towards the cloud.

She watched his silhouette as, half hidden by dust, he looked around him, then he stooped and picked up a bundle.

“Newspapers,” he said, coming out of the cloud and smiling. “It’s Jack.”

“Newspapers?” said Natalie.

Christopher nodded. “When we were boys, living in Cambridge, during the war, Jack did a newspaper round. He hated it—it was the tamest thing he ever did, so he’s always said. It’s his way of letting us know he’s arriving, spicing up newspaper delivery. These are the Nairobi papers. Come on, let’s get back. He’ll have all the latest political gossip.”

Natalie stared at the scarlet embers of the campfire. The smoke stung her eyes slightly and scratched at her nostrils. She barely noticed. Above the crackle of the flames, which curled fondly around the logs, there rose the warm chords of Elgar’s cello concerto.

How different the camp was tonight. Eleanor, unless Natalie was mistaken, had embellished her mouth with lipstick. Daniel had on a crisp shirt she hadn’t seen before. Even Naiva wore a fresh uniform. Clearly, Jack Deacon wasn’t just anybody.

When they had returned to camp, earlier that day, after their morning’s digging in the gorge, Jack was already in the camp, unloading the two Land Rovers that had met him at the airstrip. He had his own plane and flew it himself, as Christopher had said. It had crossed Natalie’s mind that his arrival was a bit like that of Father Christmas—he had brought with him all manner of gifts: film for Christopher, penicillin for Jonas, wooden fencing for Aldwai, a case of champagne, batteries for this and that.

But his most precious possession was all his own: a wind-up record player and a couple of dozen records. “All I could fit into the Comanche,” he said.